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+---- Thread: {se} In the quiet hearts of hurricanes (/showthread.php?tid=7526)
{se} In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Harper - 09-01-2022
He’d sought out Maeve the next moment he’d had with her. Giving no time for fretting, confusion, or fear over his and Jude’s disappearance back to Harper’s old home. With Jude and Phoebe together, Harper had struck out - alone for the first time in a year - to find Maeve.
He finds her in the Court, and he’s sure she can feel the hurricane of emotion the second he’s in range; grief, confusion, hurt, confusion. Anything she asks is responded to with vague, half-there answers and the shake of his head until they’ve made it to the coastline. The waters are cold and dark, winter’s grip unrelenting, but he doesn’t care about that now.
He turns and grabs both her hands, and finally looks into her eyes. [say] “I’m going to tell you a lot at once, but I need you to hear me to the end, okay? It’s going to be a lot. But I can’t leave anything out.”[/say] The risks of her potential reactions, martyrdom, or hurt are too high. But he won’t let her linger in tension and anticipation either. [say]“Phoebe is back,”[/say] he says immediately. She will feel again in fresh waves Harper’s hurt, abandonment, confusion, but Harper has never relied on magic to spearhead his communication. He squeezes her hands in case she tries to pull away, not wanting to give her a chance to pull away or assume. [say]“She said she was in a garden, a magical one of some sort, and that the past year felt like minutes to her. She didn’t remember having Jude at all. She was…really not doing well at first, being faced with all the changes.”[/say] He can recall her proprietary screech, demanding he hand Jude over, like a ringing bell in his ears. But she’d been so gentle with the baby after, and for that he is immensely grateful. [say]“I told her about us. And I told her that…that I’m not sure if I can be with her, but that I would never dream of keeping Jude away from her, or her out of Jude’s life.”[/say] Lifting a hand, it rubs rough over his face - and then lingers there, over his eyes, as the tears finally, finally come. [say]“I don’t know what to do Maeve. I don’t - she left us, again, and I moved on because that’s what she always preached.”[/say] For herself and others, and Harper had been grateful for her teaching him that lesson once upon a time. [say]“But now I’ve hurt her by doing that, because this time I grieved her entirely and moved on, but to her time didn’t even pass.”[/say]
His hand falls, and the wetness on his cheeks is cold, but easy to ignore. Gripping Maeve’s hands - desperately, or reassuringly? He can’t tell - Harper forces the weight of his sincerity to the forefront of the bond. [say]“I won’t just pack up and leave you because she’s back - I don’t want to. And I don’t trust her anymore. Gods, what if she disappears again, but Jude is with her?”[/say] Terror like he’s never known roils in his heart. His only child, his firstborn. Lost. He can’t conceive of it; it makes him feel dark, terrible things that he hasn’t faced in years, and in fear of Maeve sensing them he shoves them deep down once more. [say]“But I don’t know what to do. I don’t…”[/say] he trails off, hand rising to cover his eyes once more, white-knuckled with how tight he presses down on them; pressing and pressing until he sees sparks in the darkness. Wanting to hide away, or to hide his tears, he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know anything anymore.
RE: In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Maeve - 09-02-2022
When Maeve had left Harper it had been with a sweet kiss to his lips and a tender brush of her fingers through Jude's curls, promising to be back from the shrine soon, knowing that her visit with Safrin was unlikely to keep her long. They didn't often linger these days, both too busy with their duties to do so, but the Nightshade hadn't expected to come home to an empty house. At first there wasn't a need for concern. No panic to edge into her bones and set her teeth on edge. Not until she saw the disarray the room was left in. The still scattered toys and the hastily opened drawers of Jude's dresser. The missing jars of baby food from the counter that accounted for more than just an evening meal.
A myriad of thoughts run through her head, each one worse than the next, and she's unsure of where to even begin. Harper wouldn't just leave. No. No. There was no way. Not after what had happened. Not after what they talked about. What they promised. The ring on her finger, whether it was an engagement ring or not, bound them together. They were intertwined now, but these thoughts are stopped before they can go much farther, Harper finding her standing there with fear in her gut. He doesn't answer her questions. Not until they're by the water, the chill biting at her exposed skin as she looks up at him with wide eyes, lost in the sea of his emotions and desperate for a lifeline.
Her hands grip his in a vice, unwilling to release him, pressing further into his space as if she could sink into his bones and live in the hollow of his chest and replace the pain that's settled there. [say]"Okay."[/say] She breathes, unsure of what else to say and unwilling to deny him his request even as the unease itches beneath her skin.
Phoebe. Phoebe. Phoebe.
Maeve isn't sure she's ever despised a name so much. So quickly. Not even when she was involved with Sunjata. Not even when Nate lived to make her life hell. Not even then did she feel such a visceral reaction. Barely containing the fierce swell of possessiveness and jealousy that threatens to overwhelm the bond at Harper's own flare of hurt. Maeve doesn't pull away.
No. She steps closer. A growl somewhere in her throat despite the fact that there isn't a part of her that contains any animal instinct aside from the one to protect what's hers. Vaguely she hears what he's saying, but it's reaching her through muffled ears as if there is cotton stuffed inside of them. Not that she cares to hear how Phoebe struggled. Why would she care? They had been friends once, sure. There was a time they were close, but that was before she had abandoned Harper not once, but twice. Before she had left him with a baby and no one to lean on. It didn't matter that she didn't make the choice. It didn't matter at all. Not to Maeve. No, the Nightshade was convinced that Phoebe had made her choice as soon as became Frey's demigod. It was the same kind of selfish choice that Sunjata had made.
So so selfish.
It isn't until he says her name. Until the tears start that she snaps out of her stunned stupor. Her own jade eyes rimmed red and jaw feathering. She draws in a sharp breath, fingers slipping around his wrists, tenderly brushing her thumbs along the insides as she shushes him. [say]"Harper... My love.. My light.. Look at me.."[/say] She pleads with him gently, somehow managing to keep her voice an even steady croon, urging him to bring his hands down as she molds herself to his front.
Only when he does meet her eyes, a smooth palm finding his cheek, wiping away the tears there lightly as she holds his gaze. [say]"If she tries to take him I will track her down to the ends of the earth. I will not let her take him. If that means calling down Safrin's wrath on her then so be it. I won't hesitate."[/say] She'd kill her before she let it happen. The sincerity behind her words is palpable through the bond, wrapping around him like a cocoon as she draws his forehead down to hers. [say]"She's not taking either of you from me."[/say]
Maeve had ruined people for less than taking what was hers.
RE: In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Harper - 09-02-2022
Her protectiveness is a volatile thing, cool and controlled but pointed, dangerous. It curls around him like a violet shawl, dark and shadowed, never touching him in any way that might make him think he is at fault. It is a blanket to hide under when the storm rages too loud outside your window, and he holds tight to the edges to keep it close. Nobody has ever tried to protect him before, and the chance to simply let go and have someone else handle things leaves him stupefied.
Her pleading is a distant voice in the belly of the storm, but her hands are warm, chasing away the chill of the beach. He focuses on that instead. It takes time to pry his hand away from his face, revealing a broken expression with red splotches high on his cheeks and wet eyes. The terror that winds tighter and tighter in his chest loosens abruptly at the expression he sees on her face. It’s not often he looks at Maeve and sees her as anything more or less than the woman he loves, but here and now he sees her and thinks my Queen.
Maeve’s intensity should be off-putting. He should defend Phoebe, explain that she means no harm, but right now he doesn’t have the energy. Harper shamefully wants to float in the feeling of her vindictiveness, her willingness to tear the world apart not just for Jude but for him. [say]“Thank you,”[/say] he whispers, touching their foreheads together, lingering so close that his tears grace her own cheeks as they fall. But they slow beneath her words and the touch of her hands, the constricting coil unwinding to let him breathe again.
[say]“I put her and Jude in our old house, so they would be close. But I told her I can’t promise her anything more than co-parenting.”[/say] And though he’d proposed ideas for that, it feels wrong to talk about. He says it only to assure Maeve that he isn’t going anywhere - that she still has his heart. [say]“It’s going to be so hard Maeve,”[/say] his voice cracks with the grief he already feels for the lifestyle they’d created, selfishly mourning having his little family all under one roof and in easy reach.
RE: In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Maeve - 09-02-2022
Her fury was a beautiful thing. Like the monsoons that crashed against their shores every Flowerbirth. Capable of sinking ships and leveling beaches and crumbling cliffs, but still bringing the rain they desperately needed before Longheat and new growth to the jungle. It all depended on the side that you were on. Harper? Harper is swept up into her embrace and Maeve doesn't release him. She would burn the world down for him. Fell any enemy that threatened their peace. Their family. That much would never change.
Her lips whisper across his skin. Pressing barely there kisses to his forehead, cheeks, eyelids, nose, and finally his lips. Shushing his worries with tender kisses against chapped lips, hands cupping his cheeks, uncaring of the cold that nips at her finger tips that slowly grow numb. Even as anger heats her chest, sitting heavy like an ember, constricting around her heart at the thought of someone else with their baby. Jude might not be hers by blood, but he was hers. She had raised him for a year. Fed him, bathed him, clothed him, and soothed him when he cried. No one would ever be able to replace what she was. Who she was to him.
[say]"We'll figure it out. The Court is close. We'll create a schedule."[/say] All pretty in thought, but practice was something else. Maeve wasn't sure they could do it cordially. She would try, though. For him. For Jude. Should Phoebe step out of line, however? Should she try to take Jude or come between her and Harper? Then the Nightshade wouldn't be held responsible for the steps that she took to protect her family at that point. [say]"You.. You won't be staying there, will you?"[/say]
RE: In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Harper - 09-15-2022
The press of her lips as they traverse his skin without any sense of direction or any threat of a looming end is enough to have his threads unraveling. Falling to pieces in her arms, the only place safe enough to do so. He can taste the salt of his own tears as she finally presses their lips together, caught on hers as they'd caressed his cheeks and transferred to his own. It helps break him from the swell of grief that lays heavy on his tongue.
Though he is much taller than her, he hides in the shadow of the curve of her neck, feeling the thrum of her words as she speaks. Harper clings to her waist, but her hands are the ones that shelter and center, not his. It's a weight he never wanted to put on her shoulders, but he couldn't dream of a way to prevent it. Still, the guilt is sharp and sour in the bond. How he longs to have never needed to tell her this. To break the news that their son is now no longer theirs alone. That their family will have to be fractured, their rhythms broken. That Jude will be, in many ways, taken from her; perhaps only in stretches of hours or days, but taken nonetheless compared to what she was used to. Your fault, your fault, your fault, his mind whispers insidiously.
Her tentative question - or really, her sinking dread through the bond - is what brings him back from the pit. [say]"No,"[/say] he is quick to assure, pulling himself reluctantly from her shoulder to look into her eyes, his own bloodshot and swollen but sincere. Always, always sincere. [say]"No, I'm not going anywhere."[/say] In any sense of the word. Eyes closing in grief, he tilts their foreheads together, hands bunching in the fabric at her back. [say]"I am so tired, Maeve,"[/say] and it comes out like a wounded cry, soft but hurting. [say]"I'm so tired of every choice I make being the wrong one."[/say] The tears come back, burning hot against cheeks gone half-numb with the cold of the wind.
[say]"If I didn't move on in order to be with Phoebe, I was the bad guy for leading her on. But moving on now makes me the bad guy. I’m the bad guy if I’m not there from dawn to dusk with Jude so I can be a present father, but then I’m the bad guy for not giving Phoebe space to accept we won't be together. And still the bad guy for not being there for you as your partner."[/say] Harper's face contorts in an ugly, vulnerable twist as his hands tighten at the small of Maeve's back. [say]"No matter what I do, I'm the one to blame. But all I ever wanted was to make you all happy."[/say] His own happiness be damned.
RE: {SE} In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Maeve - 09-21-2022
Maeve refuses to let his guilt be more than her love. She refuses to let it drown her out. With an urgency that's breath stealing in the way it flares along the bond, forcing itself over the welling of guilt, cocooning around Harper in a swath of warmth as her lips press to his with almost bruising force. Her fingers clutching onto him, pressing into numb skin as he attempts to burrow into the hiding spot against the column of her throat as if her pulse alone could drown out the noise of the rest of the world, keeping them both from losing their minds in the chaos of the storm around them.
Despite it all, Maeve doesn't blame him and she never could. The thought hadn't even entered her mind. Harper would never, no, could never do something to harm her. To tear their family apart. She knows this in the marrow of her bones. This wasn't on him. This was Phoebe's doing. Maeve shakes her head, hearing the words echoing in her mind, feeling his guilt choking him like smoke.
[say]"Don't do that, Harper. Don't you dare do that."[/say] She scolds so gently it's as if she's afraid her words will shatter his already delicate state. Maeve grasps his face between freezing palms, shaking her head as she clings to him, molding her body to his in an attempt to fill in all of the cracks that Phoebe has caused to fracture through his soul. [say]"You aren't a bad guy. You aren't a bad father. A bad partner. None of it. You're good. You've always been good."[/say] She rasps, voice fracturing and splintering, barely holding together as she tries desperately to keep them both afloat.
RE: In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Harper - 10-05-2022
For all her inexperience and recent exposure to what the Attuned bond is, she does not struggle a single moment in quelling the volatile seas of his emotions with the steady calm of her love. It works slowly, but with an insistence that breaks through the typhoon of his own lashing emotions, seeking a target and spinning out upon finding none. Maeve’s lips press to his with a force that even his numb lips can feel, and he stills in her arms, motionless aside from the shiver of cold his body can’t suppress. The storm begins to quiet, leaving only choppy waves and a deep, aching defeat.
When she pulls away, he slowly places his head in the cradle of her cold, pale shoulder. Her pulse thrums against his lips, and he counts the beats of her heart even as he feels and hears in tandem her firm admonishment. Harper goes with her hands willingly as she takes him from her skin and holds his face within her hands. His eyes are sore and red, but he finds her own with a listless determination. Listening, finally. Letting each word sink like a stone through those churning waters to the still sands below. Piercing through the roughage to impress her sincerity upon him. Harper tilts his head further into her touch, trusting her to hold him up in a way nobody else has ever done. [say]“I just want things to be okay,”[/say] he starts, voice quiet and empty, [say]“but I don’t even know what that would look like anymore.”[/say] And frankly they won’t figure that out here and now on this beach, but he needs to say it anyway. Harper’s eyes slide closed, exhausted by the events of the day. [say]“I love you, Maeve. I love our family. I don’t know anything else but that anymore.”[/say] The rest is chaos and grief and confusion. So easy to lose himself in without that rock to cling to.
RE: In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Maeve - 10-07-2022
Oh how she wishes she could make things okay. If only she could snap her fingers and make this all go away. The pain caused by Phoebe, the stress of the war, the uncertainty of everything. What a pretty thought that is.
Maeve holds him to her, shivering in the cold that neither of them can shake, the breeze from the ocean biting into their exposed skin as they cling to each other. The only thing keeping them afloat was this. Their love. All that they are. This is all that they have and that's okay. That will always be okay because it was all they would ever need. Fuck everyone else who tried to get in the way of that.
Her eyes hold his, jade searching warm cerulean, fingers pressing into his jawline as she holds him steady. Never once wavering even as he leans his weight further into her slender frame. [say]"I love you too. I love our family. It's all I want anymore."[/say] And it's true. So true that it hurts to think of anything else. [say]"Stay in Torchline with me. Fight with me. We can send the boys to the Sanctuary that Sunjata built if that would make it easier."[/say] Even if she hates the idea of them being away from her, but they would be safe there. Safrin's promise rings in her head, knowing that all of the children would be safe thanks to her, but this would just be another step. Another precaution.
[say]"Be with me forever, Harper. I don't want to let you go. Never again will I let someone else take you from me. I- I should have told you before. I wish I had told you sooner, but I have you now. I want our family. Me, you, Edmund, Jude, and one of our own, too. Marry me. After all of this is done. Please."[/say]
And oh, the words sound so pretty. So pretty falling from her lips. An unnamed poem, a song without music, words punctuated by the crashing of the waves and the whipping of the wind. The only melody they need set to the beat of their entwined hearts and their mingling breaths. Maeve draws in a breath, letting out in a shudder against his lips as her own curl slightly at the corners, no fear in her heart. She already knows his answer.
RE: In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Harper - 10-11-2022
He isn’t expecting an appeal, a proposition. He’d assumed she knew where he stood on the war, what he felt compelled to do as not only her partner but her councilman. But before he can reassure her that he intends to stay and fight, she continues - and it seems there is a tide that lives inside her now, one that rushes out as if seeking the only route of escape it has from between her lips. He can feel the restlessness in her, the desire to say what’s on her mind all at once, and so he subsides. Listens. Attentive, if confused.
He isn’t expecting a proposal.
In his world, it was not at all uncommon. It is not that which surprises him. No, it is the fact she takes it from his hands at all, as she has done with so many other things. Relieving him of the weight. Alleviating his concerns and preconceptions. Wanting him, actively and shamelessly, as so few have ever done. It makes his eyes burn, but his smile slowly forms, and he tilts his head to touch their foreheads together as joy begins to radiate from his side of their bond. [say]“Yes. Gods, yes, I will. I’ll marry you. When all this is over, when we’re all safe and home - I’ll marry you. I promise.”[/say] And though there are tears, they are warm, chasing away the bitter cold around them, and this time they only make him feel lighter as he presses an urgent kiss to her lips, full to overflowing with love.
RE: {se} In the quiet hearts of hurricanes - Maeve - 10-12-2022
His confusion is palpable and Maeve almost lets it get the better of her. Almost allows herself to doubt what she knew to be true, but that feeling is chased away so quickly it barely has a moment to settle in the pit of her stomach. Instead, it is replaced by an overwhelming warmth. His words rushing through her and his lips anchoring her so she doesn't get lost in the tide of his joy. Not that she would mind. The Nightshade would happily drown in that feeling for the rest of her days simply because it was him.
Her laugh is watery. Wet with relief and adoration as she melts into him. Her kiss just as bruising and desperate for an entirely different reason as she clings to the Attuned standing before her. While the war was certain and loss was inevitable, the Nightshade knew that this wouldn't change and for once, she was at peace.
~FIN <3~